Up to date July 22, 2025, at 2:19 p.m.
The Trump administration drafted a confidential technique memo in early April outlining coverage calls for it might impose on Harvard, together with inserting a lien on College belongings, placing tutorial departments in receivership, and nixing a cultural middle for minority college students, in response to a courtroom submitting final week.
The four-page memo — which incorporates each a abstract of inside adjustments Harvard had already made in response to antisemitism complaints and a want listing of future federal interventions — additionally laid out potential governance reforms designed to immediately enhance the Trump administration’s sway over Harvard’s leaders.
The memo was dated April 3, the identical day the White Home despatched a proper letter to Harvard threatening to minimize off $9 billion in federal funding until it enacted sweeping reforms.
Whereas the April 3 letter was launched publicly and laid out broad classes of institutional change, the accompanying inside memo — marked “Privileged and Confidential” — was not made public on the time. As a substitute, it was despatched privately to Harvard’s authorized workforce on April 3.
The memo gives probably the most detailed image so far of how federal officers have been weighing their choices within the early phases of the federal government’s strain marketing campaign. Describing its proposed reforms as a “menu” of choices, it outlines an much more interventionist agenda than what was formally conveyed to Harvard within the April 3 letter or an April 11 missive laying out extra detailed calls for.
The April 11 letter, which Trump administration employees later mentioned was despatched in error, reportedly shocked Harvard officers. However the memo means that Harvard was conscious, properly earlier than it publicly rejected the April 11 calls for, that the Trump administration was ready to pursue the form of intervention that College leaders would later denounce as unacceptable.
For greater than per week after receiving the memo, Harvard continued talks with the federal government, and its prime brass held out hope that the confrontation with the White Home could possibly be deescalated. It was solely after the April 11 letter formalized lots of the calls for that Harvard took negotiations, not less than briefly, off the desk.
Harvard described components of the memo in earlier courtroom filings, however the full doc was not public till late on the evening of July 14, when it was launched as a part of a 2,000-page administrative file.
Whereas a number of of the memo’s proposals have been later included into the April 11 letter — together with calls to eradicate all variety, fairness, and inclusion places of work, impose a masks ban at protests, and centralize disciplinary authority underneath the Workplace of the President — many others by no means surfaced in official correspondence.
Among the many most vital measures floated within the memo are a proposed federal lien on all Harvard belongings to ensure compliance with any future settlement, the potential abolition of the School of Arts and Sciences School Council, and the appointment of a federally accepted senior provost to supervise implementation of reforms to sure applications, which might alternatively be positioned underneath receivership.
The focused applications included Jewish Research, Close to Japanese Languages and Civilizations, and Ethnicity, Migration, Rights throughout the FAS; Faith and Public Life on the Harvard Divinity Faculty; and the Harvard Faculty of Public Well being’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Middle for Well being and Human Rights.
The memo didn’t describe how immediately the federal authorities would try to oversee the senior vice provost’s choice. However an identical official was appointed at Columbia College when the college conceded to Trump administration calls for within the spring. The memo on Harvard means that the federal government hoped to see comparable adjustments in Cambridge.
“Set up new management in problematic depts, identical targets as CU,” the memo learn.
That was not the one change that the Trump administration apparently sought to duplicate from its marketing campaign at Columbia. The memo additionally proposed utilizing trademark regulation to penalize unrecognized pupil teams — like Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, which staged the spring 2024 encampment — that use the Harvard title.
It additionally referred to as for unrecognized pupil teams to be held “accountable” and instructed that acknowledged organizations that share membership with unrecognized teams needs to be penalized, too. In contrast to later paperwork, the memo didn’t spell out punishments, however it described itself as proposing an “augmented Columbia accountability ask.”
A letter to Columbia in March referred to as for “formal investigations, disciplinary proceedings, and expulsion as applicable” for members of acknowledged pupil organizations that supported unrecognized teams.
And the memo to Harvard singled out the Basis for Intercultural and Race Relations, which runs applications for minority, first-generation, and low-income college students, for “elimination.” The workplace’s web site was taken offline in July, and its future stays unsure.
A few of the starkest adjustments mentioned within the memo concerned reforms to Harvard’s governance construction, together with a minimal requirement of 15 years of “acceptable management expertise” for future Harvard presidents. That normal might have excluded former College President Claudine Homosexual, who served 4 years as School of Arts and Sciences dean earlier than she was introduced in 2022 as Harvard’s subsequent president.
It might additionally exclude Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76, who had 12 years of expertise because the College’s provost earlier than being named interim president in January 2024 after Homosexual’s resignation.
The memo additionally really useful addressing “gatekeeping” procedures for the Board of Overseers, the College’s second-highest governing physique. Whereas alumni can presently run for a seat on the Board by way of petition, the memo inspired decreasing institutional limitations to write-in candidacies and curbing the affect of the Harvard Alumni Affiliation, which oversees nominations. The final time a write-in candidate efficiently appeared on the poll was in 2021.
The memo additionally instructed that the federal government might demand that Harvard make a “public change of stance on hiring priorities” — probably a name to repudiate an emphasis on race and gender variety amongst college. The federal government might name on Harvard to “finish prioritization of ‘activists’ and DEI standards,” the memo added.
It additionally instructed that Harvard could possibly be requested to conduct College-wide “cluster hiring” of college — a apply that may centralize these hiring selections underneath Garber’s workplace, quite than particular person departments, and will give the federal authorities a stronger lever to affect job gives.
Whereas the April 3 and April 11 letters stay the official statements of federal intent, the memo offers a uncommon have a look at what Trump administration attorneys have been contemplating behind the scenes — and what they could search now that negotiation talks have resumed between Harvard and the White Home.
In a single part, the doc acknowledged quite a few steps Harvard had already taken that aligned with federal priorities. These included adjustments to protest insurance policies prohibiting in a single day encampments, the suspension of the Faith, Battle, and Peace Initiative on the Harvard Divinity Faculty, and the dismissal of the college leaders of the Middle for Center Japanese Research.
The memo additionally cheered Harvard’s adoption of the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which has been used to categorise some criticisms of Israel as antisemitic; steering from School of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra requiring middle administrators to elucidate how their applications advance mental variety; and a rise in campus police patrols. It famous that Harvard had minimize its partnership with Birzeit College within the West Financial institution and instructed that Harvard needs to be requested to not reestablish ties.
However the memo forged these strikes as solely a starting, presenting them as a baseline for extra sweeping reforms.
Among the many different proposals surfaced within the memo is a advice to launch a “Legacy of Antisemitism” initiative — a challenge that seems to attract inspiration from Harvard’s embattled $100 million Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, which drew criticism after researchers alleged they have been instructed to gradual their work and keep away from overly formidable findings. The memo gives no element about what the proposed antisemitism initiative would contain.
However one other doc launched on Monday — an undated 10-page report authored by an unidentified particular person or group whose relationship to the Trump administration stays unclear — offers a extra detailed imaginative and prescient.
It referred to as for the creation of a Middle for Antisemitism Analysis, led by a director collectively appointed by Harvard and non secular leaders at Harvard Chabad and Hillel. The middle can be tasked with investigating the historic roots of antisemitism at Harvard and analyzing declining Jewish pupil enrollment.
Past the initiative, the report leveled wide-ranging accusations of “antisemitism and anti-Americanism” in opposition to the College and features a laundry listing of proposed reforms. It urged Harvard to droop pupil authorities operations for 5 years, sever ties with Palestinian establishments together with Dar-al-Kalima College in addition to Birzeit, and set up a conservative tutorial middle modeled after the nonpartisan Hoover Establishment at Stanford College.
The report additionally named particular college, college students, and pro-Palestine pupil teams that it mentioned needs to be sanctioned.
Whether or not Harvard ever obtained the report — and the extent of the report’s coordination with the Trump administration — stays unclear. A spokesperson for the White Home didn’t reply to a request for remark. Neither Harvard or the Trump administration has cited the report in authorized paperwork.
However the proposals the report accommodates carefully mirror themes from the April 3 memo — notably round hiring, pupil disciplines, campus protests, and institutional governance — and adjustments already in place on campus.
The report additionally mirrors lots of the calls for ultimately issued to Harvard on April 11.
Since April, Harvard has launched a concerted marketing campaign in opposition to DEI programming on campus, renaming places of work throughout practically all of Harvard’s colleges and pulling again from prior commitments to recruiting underrepresented college and college students.
It has additionally reportedly been in conversations with donors and members of the Harvard Company, the College’s highest governing physique, on constructing an initiative just like the Hoover Establishment to carry conservative programming.
The April 3 memo and the accompanying 10-page report might function a de facto roadmap for ongoing negotiations between Harvard and the Trump administration. Although not official coverage, the paperwork replicate the contours of what federal officers have thought-about — and will but pursue — as a part of a settlement.
Harvard has not but publicly acknowledged that negotiations with the Trump administration have resumed, conserving discussions confined to a small group of prime directors and choose donors. The phrases of a possible settlement settlement stay unclear.
Correction: July 22, 2025
Attributable to an modifying error, a earlier model of this text incorrectly said that the executive file containing the memo was launched on April 14. In reality, it was launched July 14.
—Employees author Dhruv T. Patel might be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Comply with him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—Employees author Grace E. Yoon might be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Comply with her on X @graceunkyoon.
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